In-Firm Advice / Expectations

[IacobucciFanGirl]

Can anyone who has been through the process of Toronto Summer Student recruit shed some light on what to expect for in-firm interviews. Is it very firm dependant? Will the questions be more technical (asking what you know about their practice areas, asking about details of your work experience, etc) or will it be more personality/fit based? 

What kind of preparation is best to succeed? 

Thank you in advance! 

[ruthlessfox]

The firms I interviewed with were purely conversational throughout the entirety of in-firms, so basically personality/fit based. It's just effectively 3-5 OCIs back-to-back with the same firm.

Maybe one major difference is that, as you go through the process and into the second and third day with some firms, you'll be expected to drive the conversations to a greater degree. That means it is generally good advice to have a lot of questions prepared for each firm. Ideally be prepared with enough questions to fill a 30-minute timeslot (per interviewer), if need be.

[IacobucciFanGirl]

9 minutes ago, ruthlessfox said:

The firms I interviewed with were purely conversational throughout the entirety of in-firms, so basically personality/fit based. It's just effectively 3-5 OCIs back-to-back with the same firm.

Maybe one major difference is that, as you go through the process and into the second and third day with some firms, you'll be expected to drive the conversations to a greater degree. That means it is generally good advice to have a lot of questions prepared for each firm. Ideally be prepared with enough questions to fill a 30-minute timeslot (per interviewer), if need be.

Thank you - this is helpful! Do you have any sense of what kinds of questions tend to be perceived as "best" ? (I know this may be far too subjective) 

[ruthlessfox]

41 minutes ago, IacobucciFanGirl said:

Thank you - this is helpful! Do you have any sense of what kinds of questions tend to be perceived as "best" ? (I know this may be far too subjective) 

Definitely subjective. You are not trying to "impress" your interviewers with the profoundness or uniqueness of your question; you are simply trying to demonstrate genuine interest in the firm. Your questions don't necessarily need to be "specific" to the firm, although it's nice if you can think of some. For example, "I see you have X mentorship program? How would you say that has helped you as an associate?".  You will also most likely get a list of interviewers about 24 hours before the interview, so you can look them up on the firm website and ask them specific questions about their practices or past work if it happens to interest you.

It's common advice to discourage candidates from asking simple questions that are on the firm's website. I also wouldn't ask questions that might allow your interviewers to make the wrong assumptions/inferences about you (i.e. "How many hours do you work per week?" is a controversial one).